not mean to despise, but in these there is
more to hope than to fear, and I have been rather anxiously expecting the
result than in any real alarm about it. I see you have a capital subject
to write about. What novel scenery, what natural curiosities and
remarkable places, what strange tribes and strange customs, what a
campaign, and what a commander you have to describe! I will willingly help
you in the points you request, and I will send you the verses you ask
for--though it is sending 'an owl to Athens',[1] I know".

[Footnote 1: A Greek proverb, equivalent to our 'coals to Newcastle'.]

In another letter he says, "Only give me Britain to paint with your
colours and my own pencil". But either the Britons of those days did not,
after all, seem to afford sufficient interest for poem or history, or for
some other reason this joint literary undertaking, which seems once to
have been contemplated, was never carried out, and we have missed what
would beyond doubt have been a highly interesting volume of Sketches in
Britain by the brothers Cicero.

Quintus was a poet, as well as his brother--nay, a better poet, in the
latter's estimation, or at least he was polite enough to say so more than
once. In quantity, at least, if not in quality, the younger must have been
a formidable rival, for he wrote, as appears from one of these letters,
four tragedies in fifteen days--possibly translations only from the Greek.

One of the most remarkable of all Cicero's letters, and perhaps that which
does him most credit both as a man and a statesman, is one which he wrote
to his brother, who was at the time governor of Asia. Indeed, it is much
more than a letter; it is rather a grave and carefully weighed paper
of instructions on the duties of such a position. It is full of sound
practical sense, and lofty principles of statesmanship--very different
from the principles which too commonly ruled the conduct of Roman
governors abroad. The province which had fallen to the lot of Quintus
Cicero was one of the richest belonging to the Empire, and which presented
the greatest temptations and the greatest facilities for the abuse of
power to selfish purposes. Though called Asia, it consisted only of the
late kingdom of Pergamus, and had come under the dominion of Rome, not by
conquest, as was the case with most of the provinces, but by way of legacy
from Attalus, the last of its kings; who, after murdering most of his own
relations, had named the